Children Often Know Best - Adler's Wisdom

As the family should be a unit, with each member an equal part of the whole, so, too, should the class. When they are trained in this way, children are really interested in one another, and enjoy co-operation.

Some people doubt whether children can really be trained to understand and help one another in this way; but it is my experience that children often understand these things better than their elders. A mother once brought her two children, a girl of two years and a boy of three, into my room:

The little girl climbed up on a table and her mother was petrified. She was too scared to move, but cried out, ‘Come down! Come down!’ The little girl paid no attention to her.

The three-year-old boy said, ‘Stay there!’ and the girl immediately climbed down safely. He understood her better than her mother and knew what to do in the circumstances.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937), What Life Could Mean to You: The Psychology of Personal Development, 1931, 1992, p. 141. Edited by Colin Brett. Excerpts by Carroll R. Thomas, Ph.D., June 15, 2021